You will remember this when all else fades, this moment, here, together, by this well. There will be certain days, and certain nights, youโll feel my presence near you, hear my voice. Youโll think you have imagined it and yet, inside you, you will catch an answering cry. On April evenings, when the rain has ceased, your heart will shake, youโll weep for nothing, pine for whatโs not there. For you, this life will never be enough, there will forever be an emptiness, where once the god was all in all in you.
John BanvilleHappiness was different in childhood. It was so much then a matter simply of accumulation, of taking things - new experiences, new emotions - and applying them like so many polished tiles to what would someday be the marvellously finished pavilion of the self.
John BanvilleIf I was asked to say what was the greatest invention of human beings, I would say the sentence.
John BanvilleI shall strip away layer after layer of grime -- the toffee-colored varnish and caked soot left by a lifetime of dissembling -- until I come to the very thing itself and know it for what it is. My soul. My self.
John Banville